Will entrepreneurship flourish in Cuba, and will it bring the same increases in the quality of life as elsewhere in the world? I am cautiously optimistic.
Tag: creativity
Compulsory Education
Everyone loves learning. The thing is that not everyone likes studying and what’s even more frustrating is to be told how we should study, why we should study etc. Making education available to everyone is benevolent but making education compulsory for everyone is something that we are so used to that we do not see the blatant problem with it – the deprivation of freedom that prevents the flourishing of precisely those who have the most potential in society; children.
My Kids Are Better Teachers Than I Could Ever Hope To Be
I am in absolute awe of my children. For as long as I have known them, they have been teaching me, and helping me grow as a person. I owe them a debt that I can never repay, and I am deeply grateful to them.
The Extraordinarily High Burden of Proof for Violating Liberty
There are excellent observations and reasons for a presumption in favor of equal liberty for all – which led me to “therefore I am libertarian.”It is true that the libertarian political philosophy I have grown to believe greatly influences my policy analyses. However, it is not merely an opinion, no different in credibility than any other opinion held for any reason.
So-Called Intellectual Property
Property ownership is central to liberty and civilization. Property rights prevent conflict over the use of scarce resources. Ironically, the term “intellectual property” (aka “IP”) represents a hodgepodge of concepts that generally introduce artificial scarcity and needless conflict.
Let the Kids Work
The Washington Post ran a beautiful photo montage of children at work from 100 years ago. I get it. It’s not supposed to be beautiful. It’s supposed to be horrifying. I’m looking at these kids. They are scruffy, dirty, and tired. No question. But I also think about their inner lives. They are working in the adult world, surrounded by cool bustling things and new technology. They are on the streets, in the factories, in the mines, with adults and with peers, learning and doing. They are being valued for what they do, which is to say being valued as people. They are earning money.
Learning: It’s Not About Education
For the very youngest children, learning is constant. Their wondrous progress from helpless newborn to sophisticated five-year-old happens without explicit teaching. They explore, challenge themselves, make mistakes, and try again with an insatiable eagerness to learn. Young children seem to recognize that knowledge is an essential shared resource, like air or water. They demand a fair share. They actively espouse the right to gain skills and understanding in a way that’s useful to them at the time.
The Rich, Spooner #16, Godwin’s Law
Send him mail. “Finding the Challenges” is an original column appearing every other Wednesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Verbal Vol. Verbal is a software engineer, college professor, corporate information officer, life long student, farmer, libertarian, literarian, student of computer science and self-ordering phenomena. Archived columns can be found here. FTC-only RSS feed available here. It is…
Toward a Free Society – Full Book
Toward a Free Society A Short Guide on Building a Culture of Liberty by Skyler J. Collins, Published 2015 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 InternationalPaperback ($6) and other digital formats found here. Preface This isn’t my first publication, but it is my first publication that I authored entirely. Everything Voluntary: From Politics to Parenting…
Chapter 5 – Agorism
Table of ContentsPrevious – Chapter 4, Radical Unschooling Chapter 5 – Agorism “Agorism is a libertarian social philosophy that advocates creating a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, thus engaging in a manner with aspects of peaceful revolution.” So says Wikipedia.(44) What is counter-economics? According to the…